One thing I really liked from my previous blog and I want to re-introduce is fashion friday. Each Friday I highlight an inspiring fashion designer or something fashion related and preferably fair fashion. This time I wanted to share these designs with you. They are made by J Moon. Moon is a freshly launched based in London womenswear label. Designer Jay Jinhee Moon graduated from London College of Fashion in 2014. Jinhee was the one of twenty seven finalists chosen to present collection at the LCF 2014 BA Press show and was the winner of ‘The Best Directional Use of Colour & Textile Award’ at the show. From this catwalk show, she featured in many press and selected the one of 200 emerging designers in Italian Vogue talents in 2014. Jinhee finds fun in design realization of 2d drawing to 3d garment. Trying new things to get inspiration from life style and particularly keen on artworks to apply to the unique aesthetical and interesting fashion design. She loves to make experimental garments with unusual mixture of texture, colour and shape. Playful, odd but new and interesting aesthetic is the unique signature of Jay Jinhee Moon’s design and the brand ‘J Moon’. […]

Yesterday I thought about being a mother and about how hard and surreal I think it is. Still. I see my boy growing up so fast and I can barely keep up. It’s still unimaginable that he’s my son, my incredible special boy. I do hope you all had a special Mothersday on which you honored the women that brought you into this life. However strange, intense, hard, loving or confusing your own relationship with your mother may be, she is still the one who held you when you cried at night. Or sat with you when you were sick. When I think about the love I received from my mother (and still do), I feel I’m blessed and I hope I can be half as good a mother as she was to me. {1. Tamara Muller / 2. Nancy Straughan}

It’s been a while since I wrote a blogpost. A lot has happened in my little life, I left my job after six years and because it was a job I cherished it was all very emotional. However I do think it is for the best. I wasn’t happy for a while and didn’t feel it was the place for me anymore. Sometimes life gives you lemons and then you need to make lemonade. I will try to seize this opportunity to find out my true passion and hopefully somewhere along the road I will find a job again that I love. This really is a time to weave a new life for myself. Speaking of weaving: I found these incredible tapestries made by Maryanne Moodie. She makes collections for private and commercial clients and I think her work is really beautiful. They are a bit expensive, but who knows: maybe we’ll win the lottery some day! Or I can take up weaving!

While we are in the middle of the warmest winter in ages (you don’t really hear me complaining) I can easily get away with looking at summer collections past and present. According to the Russian fashion designer Lesia Paramonova her brand LES (Russian for ‘forest’) attempts to merge humans and nature. This is why you can see a lot of floral prints, animals and transparent materials in her collections. The photo’s of this collection are from her summer 2012 collection and I think they are really beautiful. Soft materials with flowers and animals, pure and feminine. Like a dream. Do check out her latest collection at her Tumblr site. She makes her own illustrations too. {all photo’s copyright Lesia Paramonova)

I’m a huge fan of the work by Mae Engelgeer so I jumped at the opportunity of visiting her studio and interviewing her. If you don’t know her work, you must be living under a design rock, cause she’s been featured nationally and internationally in almost every design magazine and blog from Elle decoration, to Bloesem and she’s taking the world by storm. On top of that she really is the sweetest person. Please make sure to check out MagasinMae for your very own Mae Engelgeer piece or check for the nearest retailer. The Kindred Spirits interviews are now done in a slightly different format. I hope you like it! Can you tell something about your background and how you ended up in textiles? I have a background in fashion. I graduated at AMFI, the Amsterdam Fashion Institute, where I specialised in Textile Design. After a while of working in fashion I was accepted at the Sandberg Institute, direction Free Design, the master course of the Rietveld Academie. Here I had the opportunity to learn more about textiles in relation to autonomous art and design and especially the area that exists in between. Where do you find your inspiration? What has been the inspiration […]

A while ago I came across the journal de jours blog of Hermine van Dijck. She is a textile designer living in Antwerp and I was intrigued by her name because Hermine is actually the name of my mother and van Dijck sounds like the name of a painter, come to think of it: isn’t it the name of a painter? So I began following her blog. I love her love for the simple things, her style is clean and arty. Blossom actually is a limited edition book with photo’s by Eefje de Coninck (another beautiful name) and with textiles by Hermine. It immediately struck a chord so I was very happy that Hermine gave her blog readers the possibility to buy a copy of the book. I do love it, It is tender and dreamy and the photo’s seem to tell a story. Those are the best photo’s. You can also purchase the book on Eefje’s site by the way.

During our vacation we went to a B&B in Brabant for a couple of days. We were close to the Efteling which we visited and we were also close to Tilburg. I wanted to visit the Audax museum of textiles located in Tilburg for a while now and here we had the perfect opportunity! I made some pics at the museum, we enjoyed ourselves very much. If you love beautiful fabrics and would like to know more about their history and how they were produced and their production now this is just the place to visit.

I came across these exceptionally crafted birds in one of my favourite online magazines; Covet Garden. They are made by British artist Abigail Brown. Aren’t they lovely? She produces her birds entirely by hand, in her studio in London, England. They are crafted from both new and reused materials. Each piece is unique, no two pieces will ever be the same. I do like birds. I also think each bird has a symbolic meaning like for instance the swan (meaning purity, love, grace, sincerity and beauty) or the kingfisher (meaning peace and prosperity). My favorite bird is the hummingbird. What’s yours?